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This research project is an interdisciplinary investigation of the memory of the 1904-1908 Namibian genocide through its performance representation(s). It lies at the intersection of performance, memory and genocide studies. The research considers the role of performance in remembering, memorialising, commemorating, contesting, transmitting and sustaining the memory of the genocide across time and place. The project frames performance as a media through which history is narrated by positioning performance as a complex interlocutor of the past in the present. This claim is premised on the assumption that the past is not simply given in memory ‘but it must be articulated to become memory’ (Huyssen, 1995:3). The research considers commemoration events and processes as fruitful performance nodes to uncover the past as well as the politics of the present. It makes the case that while the Namibian genocide has so far been denied official or state acknowledgement, it is chiefly through the medium of performance that the genocide memory is remembered, contested and performed. The project offers a variety of perspectives on the relationship between genocide violence, memory and space by focusing on what is remembered, how it is remembered and by paying attention to when it is remembered. The research contributes to an understanding and reconstruction of memory and performance of the Namibian genocide on two fronts. Firstly, as a cultural phenomenon and secondly, as a form of elegy and memorial in contemporary times. These insights contribute to the emerging body of scholarly work on performance and the cultural memory of the Namibian genocide. The project also charts avenues of inquiry in the production and transmission of memory across time and generations, within and beyond Namibian national borders. It pays close attention to performance’s contribution to the formation of cultural memory by exploring the conditions and factors that make remembering in common possible such as language, images, rituals, commemoration practices, exhibitions, theatre and sites of memories. Through examining the specific role of performance as a medium of cultural memory of the Namibian genocide the study considers ‘memory as performing history’ (Shuttleworth et al., 2000:8). The research interrogates how contemporary artistic performance representations and interpretations from within and outside of Namibia inform the way societal history and the present are presented and remembered. Performance becomes an aperture to investigate the enduring contemporary role of the memory of the Namibian genocide as well as its simultaneous reconfiguration. This enables the project to investigate how memories circulate across time and place - transnationally and across generations. This cross-border and transgenerational reflection is essential to understanding how the Namibian genocide has and is articulated, circulated, structured and remembered through performance in the postcolony.

The starting point of this research study began with a broad and unwieldly question - what would Zimbabwe look like if colonisation didn’t happen? This question arose with regard to the launch of the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act (IEEA) in 2007 and is focused of on building an understanding of notions of indigeneity in Zimbabwe through an inquiry of indigenousness and indigenisation. The methodological approach is designed as an interdisciplinary and experimental research inquiry that processes these debates and proposes an expansion of the probabilities of notions of indigeneity within the range of existing socio-political, economic and historical analyses of indigenousness and indigenisation in Zimbabwe. This exploration begins with a broad historical, anthropological and etymological survey of the term 'indigenous’ that is interwoven with a contextual account of Zimbabwe and its socio-political lifespan. The primary site of investigation is the independence-day ceremony that took place at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, Zimbabwe on the 18th of April 2017. This focus is motivated by two distinctive elements at this event - a banner that declares 'ZIMBABWE WILL NEVER BE A COLONY AGAIN’ and a fragment from the president’s speech that asserts, 'we can now call ourselves full masters of our destiny’ (Mugabe 2017). This event stands as a crucial node for the debates and questions this research aims to pose regarding notions of indigenisation, indigenousness and registers of indigeneity. Political and socio-economic analyses of this annual ritual tower above the lacuna of analysis of its performance logics. This performance-specific inquiry aims to contribute new meanings and complexity around the event. The information generated from this reading is further processed through the mechanisms of speculative research as a way to think beyond the dilemmas and paradoxes that emerge from the historical, anthropological and performance analyses of this event. The penultimate chapter of this dissertation suggests a conceptual rehearsal of the findings generated through an expanded understanding of queer theory. The final articulation of 2 this research investigation extends the experimental approach, presenting a set of visual, aural and sculptural elements as the conclusion. The dissertation offers alternate readings of notions of homogeneity and singularity. It is also constituted as a way to understand the probability of building new knowledges through lateral and rhizomic processes as a journey that gathers and synthesizes from across a number of disciplines. The contention of this thesis, then, is to suggest an expansion of the notion of indigeneity towards the possibility of polygeneity, a notion that aims to align with the conceptual constructs of cosmopolitanism (Appiah 2006, Kleingeld and Brown 2014), which engage arguments for expanded understandings of contemporary identity formation. Embodied in this suggestion of polygeneity lies the potential to revive notions of dynamism and creativity that have been dormant since the onset of European colonisation in Zimbabwe. In the wake of the 'new dawn’ in Zimbabwe, in this moment of growing debates for alternatives, the thesis finds its impulse in the imperative for radical and creative shifts in consciousness to activate new ideas, new readings, and new knowledges.

This study analyses, over a three-year period, a theatre programme with forensic psychiatric patients and staff at Fort England psychiatric hospital in Grahamstown/Makhanda, South Africa. Framed as a ‘theatrical playground', programme sessions were structured around theatre games, improvisation and devised theatre processes that culminated in playmaking at the end of each session. Participation in the group was voluntary and constructed to allow involvement in theatrical play on its own terms, set apart from the therapeutic and rehabilitation agendas that govern the institution. By means of a conceptually-driven critical analysis of the empirical practice, the study explores the ethical tensions and possibilities of locating all participants as political actors with agency to develop the stories, characters, and images they choose for themselves. It juxtaposes the democratic principles of the theatre space with the oppression and control of psychiatry when viewed as a Total Institution. I draw on the work of Michel Foucault and Erving Goffman in order to conceptualise a history and critique of psychiatry, and to contextualise how colonial psychiatry developed in South Africa. I compare manifestations of power and control that are part of forensic psychiatric practices with the political possibilities of different resistant theatre spaces, such as the work of the Olimpias artist collective and the Madness Hotel (Vitor Pordeus). I show how these examples, and the theatre project researched here, approach all participants as authors and makers of and on the world. I deploy a Vygotskian lens to discern how participants collectively create a Zone of Proximal Development, which explains the profound shifts in learning and skills observed in participants considered as low functioning or beyond treatment or rehabilitation. The study analyses three aspects of the practice: video documentation of selected workshops and performances; interviews with patient and staff participants; and my reflective practitioner field notes - in order to build the case for the radically humanising effect of the theatre playground. My analysis of key moments in the theatre practice highlights the ways in which patient-participants perform ‘a head taller' than clinical staff's expectations, when offered opportunities to experiment with relationships by means of embodied practices in a creative process set apart from the therapeutic gaze. Reflective and critical analysis of the practice reveals three types of experience in particular: first, hope as an overall affect that aligns with a recovery approach to mental health; secondly, how participation is experienced as humanising by disrupting and playing with institutionalised roles and bodies; and finally, how permission to play with the roles, narratives, and the power structures of psychiatry as an institution, reoriented participants as political actors in relation to the forensic hospital and the wider world. These experiences challenge the stigma and positioning of forensic psychiatric patients as incapable, outside of culture and humanity, and reposition them as legitimate knowers and creators.

This practice-as-research project discusses modes, processes and aesthetics of contemporary dramaturgy, as practiced in experimental theatre and dance works in Europe from the 1990s onwards. In order to do this, the project draws particularly on discourses around ‘drama’ and suggests that the term can be redefined and usefully rehabilitated for both analysis and the creation of experimental performances. More specifically, this project defines drama (deriving from the Greek dro=act) as stage action, and dramaturgy (deriving from the Greek drama + ergo= work) as a practice that works endlessly for the creation of this drama/action on stage and is therefore always connected with it. In order to approach the newly proposed notion of ‘experimental drama’, this research uses the six main dramatic elements offered by Aristotle in his Poetics: plot, character, language, thought, the visual and music. Furthermore, it adds a seventh element: the spectator and contemporary understandings around the conditions of spectatorship. It then offers an analysis of dramaturgical processes and aesthetics of experimental stage works through these elements. Given that this is a practice-as-research project, it is accordingly multi-modal and offers its perspectives on dramaturgy and experimental drama through both critical and performance texts, documentation traces (photographs and video recordings) of artistic practice – all present in this thesis – and a live event; all these modes complement each other and move constantly between the stage and the page to proceed with the research’s inquiries. The current thesis has borrowed the dramaturgical structure of two artistic projects, created within the frame of this research practice, to generate its writings. The introductory parts of this text place the work within the discourse on practice-as-research and discuss the project’s proposal for an analysis of contemporary dramaturgy through drama. The Short (Research) Stories that follow analyze experimental works, created both within the frame of this research practice and outside it, by other artists, following the Aristotelian model. The element of spectatorship intervenes in this analysis instead of standing separately in the thesis. The project’s closing live event returns from the page to the stage to continue and add to discussions around central issues of the work, in its various distinct modes.

A Newfound Passion- Choreography analyzes the artistic process and life journey of creating choreography for musical theatre. My training as a dance minor at East Tennessee State University from 2011-2015 culminated in my final senior capstone experience as a choreographer for the ETSU Division of Theatre and Dance’s production of Oklahoma!. Composing a new musical theatre dance and analyzing the original choreography of Oklahoma! (and the art of choreography more generally) provided significant material for analysis, and the following research reflects what I learned and experienced. Overall, the experience of choreographing has changed the way I see myself as a dancer and has instilled in me a new sense of respect for choreographers around the world.

Esse trabalho traz questões estéticas da dança e da linguagem cinematográfica focalizando os registros audiovisuais de um espetáculo. O desenvolvimento da relação entre essas duas formas de arte vão desde os registros iniciados por Edson até as modernas videodanças ou videoclipes. Kontakthof, coreografado e dirigido por Pina Bausch e dançado por três elencos de idades e formações diferenciadas e registrados de formas muito distintas em cinco filmes, é usado para se discutir a importância dos registros audiovisuais enquanto memória, explorando aproximações e distinções entre o documentário e a documentação num cenário em que cinema e dança geram conhecimento do presente e do passado. Por fim, esta pesquisa destaca uma mesma cena dessa coreografia, encontrada nos filmes Pina de Wim Wenders e Un jour Pina m`a demande de Chantal Akerman e no registro da peça integral, analisando-a a partir dos diferentes olhares e estratégias. Conclui-se, então, que o registro, com sua aparente aspiração de objetividade, abre espaço para a explicitação da subjetividade tal qual os outros filmes, resgatando essa forma de audiovisual do exílio ao qual, normalmente, é encerrado nas discussões sobre o universo cinematográfico / This thesis aims to offer reflections about the relationships between dance and cinema focusing on the audiovisual records of the Kontakthof choreography, conceived and directed by Pina Bausch. The Kontakthof piece is danced by three casts varying in age and dance background and it was registered by five filmmakers who used very distinct cinematographical principles. It discusses the importance of records and movies as memory and simultaneously explores the meta questions of how art, cinema and dance generate knowledge about the present and the past. This is accomplished by focusing on one scene that appears in \"Pina\" from Win Wenders, \"One Day Pina Has Asked Me\" from Chantal Ackerman and in the documentation itself of the whole Kontaktof piece This scene is then analyzed bringing forth the three different perspectives that generated them. This thesis points out that the registry itself, with its outward intention of being a vessel for memory, becomes an attentive, receptive space, wherein its subjectivity can be ultimately revealed. This inquiry, in turn, allows this form of registry to be rescued from the cinematographical exile that it had been condemned in the past.

Esse trabalho traz questões estéticas da dança e da linguagem cinematográfica focalizando os registros audiovisuais de um espetáculo. O desenvolvimento da relação entre essas duas formas de arte vão desde os registros iniciados por Edson até as modernas videodanças ou videoclipes. Kontakthof, coreografado e dirigido por Pina Bausch e dançado por três elencos de idades e formações diferenciadas e registrados de formas muito distintas em cinco filmes, é usado para se discutir a importância dos registros audiovisuais enquanto memória, explorando aproximações e distinções entre o documentário e a documentação num cenário em que cinema e dança geram conhecimento do presente e do passado. Por fim, esta pesquisa destaca uma mesma cena dessa coreografia, encontrada nos filmes Pina de Wim Wenders e Un jour Pina m`a demande de Chantal Akerman e no registro da peça integral, analisando-a a partir dos diferentes olhares e estratégias. Conclui-se, então, que o registro, com sua aparente aspiração de objetividade, abre espaço para a explicitação da subjetividade tal qual os outros filmes, resgatando essa forma de audiovisual do exílio ao qual, normalmente, é encerrado nas discussões sobre o universo cinematográfico / This thesis aims to offer reflections about the relationships between dance and cinema focusing on the audiovisual records of the Kontakthof choreography, conceived and directed by Pina Bausch. The Kontakthof piece is danced by three casts varying in age and dance background and it was registered by five filmmakers who used very distinct cinematographical principles. It discusses the importance of records and movies as memory and simultaneously explores the meta questions of how art, cinema and dance generate knowledge about the present and the past. This is accomplished by focusing on one scene that appears in \"Pina\" from Win Wenders, \"One Day Pina Has Asked Me\" from Chantal Ackerman and in the documentation itself of the whole Kontaktof piece This scene is then analyzed bringing forth the three different perspectives that generated them. This thesis points out that the registry itself, with its outward intention of being a vessel for memory, becomes an attentive, receptive space, wherein its subjectivity can be ultimately revealed. This inquiry, in turn, allows this form of registry to be rescued from the cinematographical exile that it had been condemned in the past.

Thesis (M.A.) (Honours) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 2000. / A thesis presented in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (Honours) - (Performance), School of Applied Social and Human Sciences, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 2000. Bibliography : Vol. 1, leaves 202-209.

Der französische Choreograph Jérôme Bel setzt in seinem biographischen Zyklus von 2004-2009 das Verhältnis von Werk und Autor, von Choreographie und Choreograph in Szene, vor deren Hintergrund die Geschichten und Namen des Tanzes anders lesbar werden: Die Stücke Bels tragen als Titel die Namen der Tänzer, die in ihnen auftreten. Die Geschichte der Namensgebung in der Arbeit Bels ist auch eine Geschichte, in der sein Name als Choreograph und Autor verschwindet, wenn er erscheint und erscheint, wenn er verschwindet. Von diesem Grenz-Ort aus wäre jene Geste zu befragen, die Jérome Bel vollzieht, wenn er den Stücken, für die sein Name steht, als Titel den Namen der Tänzer gibt, die in ihnen auftreten.